Auchenstroan Coloured Ryelands

Hello, I’m Sky the sheep.  Over the winter I got into a pickle.  You can read about this in the blog post before this one. It’s now June, four months have passed since my accident.  Here’s what happened: One cold day back in February I was sitting in the shed with the other sheep sheltering […]

One of our elderly sheep, Sky, has had us a little concerned lately.  Being fourteen she’s one of the original members of the ‘green bucket club‘.  (Our older sheep get a daily ration of soaked grass and alfa-beet pellets to give them a boost).  Despite her advanced age, Sky is a feisty little sheep and […]

One of our winter jobs on the smallholding is to deal with the ever encroaching brambles in and around our land and garden.  Brambles grow very happily here, seemingly more than any other plant, possibly with the exception of creeping buttercup and willowherb.  Our brambles are particularly vigorous and fast growing and they love nothing […]

Smallholding life presents a continuous supply of small challenges, each unique many requiring a bit of thought. Much like life really. One such challenge was the salt lick. In the wild, many animals lick soil to get salt. For sheep, we try to make things a little easier by installing a salt lick. This comprises […]

Fitting in sheep maintenance can be quite tricky when running a smallholding.  Keeping on top of hoof trims, dagging and whatnot in between our day jobs and life in general can sometimes be a challenge.  So we try to keep Saturdays free for sheep jobs and we keep a list stuck on the fridge telling […]

A few weeks ago, Betty one of our Orpington hens went broody.  She stayed in the nest box all day ruffling up her feathers and pecking any hens that came too close.  We pondered what to do, we don’t have a cockerel anymore so we’d either have to provide her with hatching eggs to sit […]

A few years ago, one of our sheep (the lovely Vera) developed an allergy to sunlight.  At first we weren’t sure what was causing her skin flare ups, but after careful monitoring and a couple of vet visits it transpired that she had become photosensitive. The most likely cause of photosensitivity – in Vera’s case […]

Our sheep love nothing better than the springtime when they come off hay and move onto fresh, juicy grass.  Perhaps it’s the excitement of being back on grass after months of hay, or perhaps its their digestive systems re-adjusting or both, but all that fresh forage means some of our teddy bears get messy bottoms […]

Last April we noticed some of our elderly sheep (the 12 year olds) had come out of winter looking a bit slimmer than we liked.  So after a bit of research we came up with a plan – daily buckets containing a mixture of soaked alfalfa-beet and meadow grass pellets. This is our first experience […]

Running a smallholding seems to involve a lot of muck shovelling.  Especially during the winter when the little darlings spend much of their time mooching around the shed, the paddock and the hay feeders. With the increase in hoof-fall, these areas soon become very mucky.  So, every afternoon I pull on my gloves, my wellies […]

It’s a while since I put paw to paper, you can read my last story here: A few days ago something brilliant happened, the outside world turned white and the ground turned crunchy.  Us dogs, we have two worlds; the outside world where we go on patrol and run about.  And the inside world where […]

Now we’re a month into winter we’ve moved the little darlings onto hay again.  Although there’s still grass on the hills and the flock trundle round grazing, the grass lacks nutritional content and isn’t sweet and tasty like it is in the summer. For the last few winters we’ve been really lucky getting in small […]